Otis like Courage the cowardly dog won

by Mary Beth S.

My mom says we always have the best luck with pets that find us, rather than ones that we seek out. The best example would be Otis, our Labrador/Dachshund mix.

I was sitting upstairs at home when my brother came up and told me that our mom brought home a black lab puppy. I was surprised -- she was NEVER one to take home animals and always got upset when one showed up at the house.

Everyone loved the dog -- he was adorable! But the more I looked at him, something looked off. He looked like a lab, but his body was extremely long and his legs looked kind of stubby. "Does he have wiener dog in him?" I asked.

It turns out that the mother was a lab and the father was a Dachshund. The man who owned the puppies wasn't even sure how or when it happened. He took the puppies into my mom's workplace (he was a friend of her boss) trying to find them homes.

He was initially refused, but when he went to leave, one dog stayed behind my mom's desk and refused to come out. Her heart melted, she dubbed him "Otis," and he's been ours ever since.